This was [Hard Mode] for me, but I recently came upon a colorized picture of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and discovered he was a natural redhead. I consider him and Benjamin Franklin to be the patron saints of America, if such a thing exists. Maybe it's their penchant for pranks.

Oh wow, you just dropped so much on me!

Mark Twain's real name is one I haven't heard before. That's probably on me, though, since I never read any historical account of him.

Redhead? Never would have figured it out.

And... he was incredibly influential! Also an inventor, friends of Nikola Tesla. Kind of a cowboy. Prankster? I had no idea.

Thank you for sharing! Mind if I ask -- how did you get to this nugget of knowledge?

I have a bunch of images from the late 19th and early 20th century of plates that were colorized through some process I don't really understand. Most of Mark Twain's photos were taken of him by friends later in his life, so he has white hair, but you can see a younger Mark Twain here: https://app.unsee.cc/#qZjtKi203JiEwhuB

And Mark Twain was a huge prankster. He once sent a telegram to a dozen of his friends that only said "Flee, the plot has been discovered" and then claimed four of them left town immediately. No idea if it's true, but he certainly comes off as having a great sense of humor for his time.

lol, that's awesome.

Thank you for sharing! Now I know too!

This is a [Normal mode] for me, since I learned a bit of this last week and I'm still processing it.

I'm currently working on something related to stock trading. And as you might have heard, stocks move fast.

They're so fast that there's a concept called "bid-ask spread". It's basically the difference between the price at the time you asked to buy something and the price at the time you got it. And mind you, these are electronic systems, which will respond in milliseconds.

For a shock analogy: imagine going at the grocery store and the price changing during the milliseconds you're swiping your card.

Crazy stuff.

For crazy stock trivia: Take a look at the stock history for Zoom Technologies. When everyone started working from home its stock price rocketed up 1800% in a matter of days and trade frequency shot up to the Moon.

One problem: Zoom Technologies doesn't offer video conferencing software. That's Zoom. The SEC wound up pausing Zoom Technologies trades because the computer-driven systems were perpetuating a tornado of trades for a little company that makes radios for cell phones, all because people mistook one company for the other.

Huh. What’s worse, it’s not even the first time that happened. (link)

It’s so crazy things are so... artisanal... and yet so powerful they can shift the world completely.